Almost two years ago now, I wrote an article for Boundless entitled “I Want to Be a Mom.” The topic of at-home mothering was nothing novel, so I was surprised by the response — I received about a hundred letters in all, from young female readers who shared my dreams, women who were mothers already and appreciated the support, and even a husband who gave his wife a copy as a tribute to her hard work. (The best compliment I received, however, was from a nice young man who eventually helped me attain my dreams by marrying me a year later.) I also got a handful of critiques, pointing out my idealism and lack of experience in particular.

About a month into being a Mrs., I began to discover just “what to expect when you’re expecting” — like getting out of bed in the morning and losing the grapefruit you had for supper the night before. Now another year has passed and my five-month-old son, Gideon, is rocking wildly on all fours as I write. (For those of you who have followed our story — he was born at home Sept. 6 weighing in at a robust 9 pounds with a swish of dark hair and very big hands.) If there were nothing to add to my previous assertions I would be on the floor tickling chuckles out of him instead of sitting here wrestling with words — but I still occasionally get letters from people who want to know my thoughts now that I’m trying to live what I preached.

One area in which my thoughts have developed further since writing the first “mom article” is that of economics. In our day, “economics” brings to mind Alan Greenspan and the globalized market — but the actual Greek word from which we get the term (oikonomikos) refers to household management. (That’s the one thing I remember from my college economics class.)

Household management and the raising of children ought to stretch our ingenuity and demand a full range of skills. A hundred years ago, being a housewife was a much more challenging and stimulating vocation than what the term brings to mind today — it involved growing your own food, making your own clothes and gifts, providing your own family’s entertainment (singing, reading, game-playing), and teaching your own children. These are what Psalm 128 alludes to, in part, when it speaks of happiness derived from the work of your hands. These things are now taken care of for us in our post-industrialized world, so we have to work at regaining bits of such knowledge: gardening for table veggies and flowers (which has the added benefit of getting us outside away from TV and computer screens); sewing curtains and mending clothes; plumbing toilets and cleaning eaves.

Household craftiness can even bring in a little income. Women have been pitching in with the “breadwinning” from time immemorial. In Proverbs 31, for example, you find a mom selling garments and belts she has made and buying land on which to plant a vineyard from her earnings. In America, up until the early twentieth century, many wives lived on farms and made extra money by selling eggs and milk at market. Now, thanks to the Internet, countless home-based businesses are more feasible than ever. One mom I know started sewing cloth diapers for her own little girls and ended up selling some on her website. So many orders have come in that she recently had to hire two stay-at-home mom seamstresses just to keep up. Being an entrepreneur is certainly not a prerequisite for qualifying as a successful housewife — it’s simply one way modern moms can exercise their creative abilities without compromising their children’s well-being.

***

Stay-at-home moms also used to have a whole network of social support available to lighten the mundane daily tasks — starting with their husbands. When the whole family existed on a farm, the father was able to work right where he lived, and all of the activities I mentioned above were shared by him, his wife, and his children. Relatives and other families were also near by and available to help out.

As a result of the cultural upheavals and the technological “advances” of the past 100 years, however, communities have been dispersed. Our friends and relatives may live several states away. Houses still have porches, but neighbors — even when they do know each other’s names — rarely spend an evening there together. Fathers have to spend most of their day far from home, which leaves mothers alone to do most of the rearing of the kids. No wonder stay-at-home moms often feel frustrated, dissatisfied, and lonely.

I don’t want to completely idealize “the olden days.” I’m terribly thankful for the medical advances that have significantly reduced infant mortality rates, for instance. But I think we need to compare ourselves to societies (some of which happen to be bygone) with more intact communal and family structures, and then try to regain, gradually and in small ways, some of the ground we have relinquished.

For my husband and I, this has meant making decisions that benefit our family more than our finances. Sam does freelance design work from home, and that alone makes me feel wealthier than a queen. We also moved to a very small rural village in Wisconsin in order to be able to afford a house on one income, and to be within 15 minutes of at least one set of grandparents. (I would daresay it’s even more important to be near extended family if the father works outside the home. My mom would be even more indispensable to me if I didn’t have Sam around.)

But each person has to do the best they can with their particular calling, skills, and opportunities. I have friends who have gotten part-time jobs during hours when their husband is available to watch the kids, solely to be able to get dressed up, shake off cabin fever, and get some mental and social stimulation. That little bit of a breather seems to make a big difference in their spirits. I also know families where the dad is the primary caregiver during the week and the mom works more. This is an okay solution, though I think it is generally harder for a mom to be away from her (young) children for extended periods of time. The deep bond that is formed in the very beginning by sharing her womb and her milk with them will naturally result in a more intense connection, and hence more unhappiness during separation for both her and her children. (I distinctly remember an aura of homely dissonance the times my mom was substitute teaching, or when she worked a few evenings a week at a department store — I think we usually cried when she left.) Women are anchors — they bring their husbands down to earth and give their children a secure base from which to venture forth.

Another writer, John Senior, said, “Woman’s place is in the home not because some chauvinist put her there but because there is a law of gravity in human nature as there is in physics by which we seek our happiness at the center.”

Though in my previous article I didn’t mean to focus on working women while letting men completely off the hook, I was simply writing from the side I knew. Now that my life is directly fused to a man’s, I’ve come to a fuller understanding of how important the father’s role in the home is. Pondering economics has led me to believe that careerism — putting work above home and seeking primary fulfillment from your job — is just as bad for men as it is for women. Husbands and fathers should strive to be home as many hours a day as possible, not only to help shoulder the mother’s burden but also to invest in their kids. Work will always be there, but your children will not.

***

For some reason, staying close to the center no longer sounds appealing to many people. Instead of creating families, they prize their autonomy. When they do marry, their lives more resemble those of college roommates — they work their separate jobs and postpone having kids. “Women are delaying childbearing as never before,” Newsweek reported last August. “The rate of first births for women in their 30s and 40s has quadrupled since 1970. At the same time, rates for women in their early 20s have dropped by a third.”

Why is this? To me, there is nothing greater than curling up between my husband and baby and knowing that both of them depend on me for their very happiness (as I also depend on them). All three of us want to be around each other constantly. My 16-year-old sister, too, complains about wanting to get married and have her own baby every time she holds Gideon. But I think that’s because we grew up in a household with a vibrant center, which formed an inner compass in each of us to help set a true course in our own pursuit of happiness.

Just as every wheel needs a hub and every cell a nucleus in order to work, every household needs a strong marriage at its center — and, over the last 50 years, an increasing number of households have been floundering without a visibly united (and physically present) team of husband and wife. Consequently, the grown children of these houses lead chaotic lives. They have never known the solidity and tranquility of a content home. They have had no role models — and if their parents were distant, dysfunctional, or unhappy, they especially have no interest in mimicking them by marrying or becoming parents themselves. As a movie star recently put it, “I’m afraid to have kids because I don’t want them to be [screwed] up like I was.”

I remember a few girls in junior high declaring that they were never going get married, or never going to have kids. Thanks to the two-child trend that their parents followed so faithfully, they had probably not held a little soft pudgy baby in their arms since they were two, when they were introduced to their one and only sibling. I think that’s fairly typical of my generation — babies are such foreign creatures to them that parenting sounds intimidating for that reason alone, even aside from other hang-ups.

I think my friends also made their sweeping declarations because of their dread of childbirth, which at the time I perceived to be very selfish reasoning — who wouldn't go through death itself for a little soft pudgy baby of your own? I see their point now — pregnancy and labor are scarier than I thought they would be. But, as others have said, courage is not the absence of fear — it is the ability to be very afraid but do what is good and right anyway.)

Fear is something I might have addressed more in my first article (though at the time I didn’t have much of it — something experience quickly took care of!). I think fear is the main obstacle between us and most of the joys God wants to bless us with. Because the greatest delights require the greatest sacrifices, we often would rather remain where we are than step out of the boat onto the water.

Though in the grind of the ordinary we sometimes forget it, human beings are the highest gifts of God in our lives. Without them, there would be no need to make sacrifices — but there would be no happiness either. Our families are where we must relinquish ourselves the most, and in return experience communion second only to that with God. That’s why the family has been hit the hardest by the selfishness pervading our culture. Because the sacrifices have not taken place, we have had very little vision of what the rewards could have been. Young and even older people today have only a vague sense of how to make a family.

What we need are more people willing to trust God with their fears and become models of self-sacrifice. The water may look unfathomably deep, and the mist and the waves may often obscure Him — but Christ is waiting for us, as he was for Peter, with outstretched hand. He will help us to regain a vision of what a happy household looks like; He will provide us opportunities to take those small steps towards a more anchored family and community. And we will discover Him in the oddest, quietest moments — like when we’re planting a seed or patching clothes.